"Foxcatcher" cast dishes on filming experience

"Foxcatcher" is an intense film based on the true story of brothers Dave and Mark Schultz, wrestling champions played by Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum. They were lured with tragic consequences to a training facility owned by the wealthy John du Pont, played by Steve Carell.

Some have said the casting choices were unconventional.

Carell, for one, said he was very surprised when he was asked to consider the part.

"I did not see it coming ... I wasn't soliciting anyone for this type of part," he said to "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King.

A lunch meeting with director Bennett Miller helped solidify his role in the movie.

"Something happened ... during that conversation that had never happened before," Carell said. "He talked about all of these scenes in great detail. Then three years later I went and saw the movie. And all of those scenes that he had painted for me were exactly as he had described."

Channing Tatum likened working on the movie to going for a workout.

"Like, you don't want to go do it but you're happy once it's done," Tatum said. "And if you did it right, you probably pushed yourself on some level that ... it wasn't comfortable."

In a way, he said the story was like what the actors were wrestling with in these characters.

"It's being comfortable in the uncomfortableness," he said.

Vanessa Redgrave plays the matriarch of the du Pont family, and she is not shy about belittling her son's wrestling fetish.

"The wonderful thing is that the film doesn't encourage anyone to put little stickers on it," Redgrave said. "That's the great thing about this director and this film and this acting."

For Tatum, working on this film was a learning experience.

"Look, I can be wholly honest. I barely graduated high school," Tatum said. "Just to be having these conversations with these highly evolved, intelligent people and getting to have made something with them is-- every-- any award that I will ever be given will never match up to that."

"And this for me has been also a terrific experience, listening to Steve and Channing and Bennett, I've been absolutely-- it's been a high-class education in joy," Redgrave said, laughing.

"Likewise," Carell responded. "It was like a flower that blooms in the desert where no water exists. And this flower we plucked and committed it to our memory."

"What's the name of the flower?" Tatum asked.

"And now we're allowing the world to study this flower, and to enjoy it as we grow it," Carell said.

"The name of the flower is love," he added.

"Brilliant," Redgrave said, laughing.

"I don't have anything good to say," Carell said. "You can't follow that."